


I'd Buy My Soul for Love

by mute90



Series: Sterek Week '18 [3]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Dawn Summers - Freeform, Established Relationship, M/M, Morbid, Sterek Week 2018, Vampire Stiles Stilinski, some malia tate, some peter hale, some scott mccall, spike (BtvS) - Freeform, sterekvampire, stiles is soulless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-09 01:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16440389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mute90/pseuds/mute90
Summary: Even soulless and undead, Stiles wanted to go home. He reasoned the only way to do that was to solve his soul problem.





	I'd Buy My Soul for Love

“Do vampires exist?” Stiles asked Derek once, early on in their pleasant acquaintanceship.

Derek reacted irritably, which was like his default response in those days. “Yes, Stiles, vampires exist. They’re not like werewolves though. They’re killers. It’s in their nature.” When Stiles very pointedly looked Derek up and down, he scowled. “Werewolves are predators by nature. We can be killers, but we don’t have to be. We can control ourselves.”

“You don’t think there’s a little bias in there?”

“No,” he answered. “You find a vampire, you kill it before it kills you and a bunch of other people.”

Stiles thought about that conversation as he looked up at the light in Derek’s window. It was their window, really, but being dead probably voided his partial ownership. Either way, he wanted to go upstairs and shower. He was covered in graveyard dirt and his knuckles were bleeding from punching through the coffin. He’d also proven to be a messy eater, his shirt carrying lines of blood from the unfortunate gravedigger.

But Derek wouldn’t really kill him, would he?

Stiles rocked back and forth from heel to toe. In all honesty, Derek might. He might call the rest of the Pack too. If vampires really were bloodthirsty little beasts - and Stiles was leaning toward ‘yes’ on that - it could almost be doing old Stiles a favor. Of course, old Stiles was now dead and Undead Stiles wanted to keep eating curly fries and kissing Derek.

“Always making things difficult,” he muttered, before turning and stomping three houses away.

A twenty-something couple with a passive little pomeranian died that night. He used the wife’s bath bomb and the husband’s clothes. He watched as his father, looking a little green and unsteady, come for Derek the next morning. He was inside for only a minute. Then, Derek stormed out. His fists were clenched. He threw himself into his car and squealed away before his dad could even settle back in his cruiser.

Stiles pressed himself against the window shade as he watched them, and the little bits of sunlight made his skin smoke.

XX

“His grave was...disturbed,” Noah told Derek. He hadn’t waited for any more information. Instead, he growled low in his throat and his eyes flashed. He’d been out of the door and in the car before the thought of ‘why’ or ‘how’ even drifted into his head. It was disturbed from the inside, he could see. The dirt had collapsed inward as something tore open the coffin and clawed upward. There was still some grooves in the ground from where he would’ve dug his fingers in until he could pull the lower half of his body out of the hole. A gravedigger was drained of blood not far off.

Noah came up behind him, slow and shaky. “Derek? Do you know who the hell did this?”

“Vampire.”

”A vampire dug up my son's grave?”

Derek shook his head and remained detached as he explained, “Stiles is a vampire, and he dug out of his own grave.”

There was silence before Noah grabbed at Derek's arm, his shirt, his shoulder: Derek remained still as the man scrabbled at his jacket. “Stiles - Stiles is back?”

Derek couldn’t take the pleading in his voice, the hope, and he stepped backward until Noah’s hand slid off his shoulder. “This isn’t really him,” he said. He looked over Noah’s shoulder as he spoke. “When people die, they lose their souls. Who they used to be gets ripped right out of them. Just take a look at the grave digger. Do you think Stiles would ever do something like that? Huh? Vampires are bloodthirsty and dangerous. The only way to -.” He stopped. A terrible image had appeared in his mind and he stopped breathing for a moment. He swallowed and began again. “We have to - .” He stopped again.

“Hey!” Noah came forward. His hand hovered over Derek’s shoulder, and his eyes darted over Derek’s face. “What are you telling me? What are we supposed to do about this?”

Derek imagined it again: Stiles stood a foot away from him watching the stake slide into his own chest with open curiosity. Seeing pleading, seeing betrayal, would have been easier. The curiosity, it just looked like Stiles. “It’s going to look like Stiles,” he breathed. Noah’s hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed. “Goddamn it! It’s going to look - I can’t - .” Noah dragged him into his arms, and Derek took them both to the ground when his knees gave out.

Xx

“So you’re saying all I have to do is brutally murder a gypsy and I’m set?” asked Stiles. He scrunched up his face because… “I can do that, but it seems a little easy. I know from painful experience that easy things are usually a trap. Is this a trap?”

The witch was unimpressed by his fangs or maybe just amused by the way he lisped around them. “It's a curse, fledgling. Not a prize to be won.”

“Yeah, I get that. But my point is, killing the gypsy is supposed to be easy?” he said. She actually rolled her eyes at him. That told him his intimidation game was so far off that it was in another timezone. He'd been a vampire for three months and still failed at the fearsome creature of the night shtick. He lost the fangs and settled for glaring. “What?”

“The gypsy was just an example. What you need is an Orb of Thesaluh. Any powerful witch can perform the ritual but the Orb is the necessary conduitl.” She raised her eyebrows at him and spoke slowly. “Do you understand?”

He spoke slowly back. “Yeah. I got it.” He wrote the name on his pocket notebook. “Do you know where to find one?”

“No.”

“And are you powerful enough for the ritual?”

She pursed her lips. “Possibly.”

“Which means ‘probably not.’” He nodded. He then reached across the table, caught her head in both hands, and twisted until there was a final crack. There was a shocked expression frozen on her face. In his defense, he was never great at the threatening but he was awesome at the follow through.

He picked up his notebook and chewed on his pen.

XX

They followed the bodies and the distorted scent from Beacon Hills to New Orleans and then back and down into Mexico. Scott was taking time off from school, Malia had flown back from France just after Stiles’ death, and Peter had gracelessly been roped in by Malia and his ‘vague’ interest in an undead Stiles. The Sheriff had been convinced to stay home with the ridiculous reasoning that Stiles might go back like he was a juvenile runaway and not a casual murderer. Derek was living on four and a half hours of sleep and one meal a day, and he still raged that he wasn't fast enough. He slept too long. He lingered on a granola bar. He stood by the entrance of the room and breathed in the twisted scent of Stiles there and gone.

“I always thought Stiles would be more theatrical,” said Peter, breaking the silence as he looked at the woman with a critical eye. Derek gave him one hard stare, but he shrugged. “I can’t be the only one who noticed the lack of enthusiasm and, frankly, the exaggeration we might expect from him.”

“Stiles can focus,” said Scott from beside the body. He’d been getting quieter with each new body, his voice lowering like he was standing respectfully at a funeral. “He’s got a goal and nothing stops him when he gets like this.”

“You’re not having doubts about saving him, are you?” Peter asked, and Scott bristled at the goading in his voice.

“Of course he’s not,” said Malia, frowning. She stepped toward Scott. “Tell him that you’re not.” Derek grabbed her by the arm just in case, because almost four months on the road together made them all want to go for the throat.

“Of course I’m not,” Scott assured her. “This isn’t Stiles. We’ll get him back.” He sighed. “I just don’t know how he’s going to handle all of this.”

“He’ll deal with it,” Derek said. “Stiles is tough. If we help him, he can get through anything.”

“How sweet,” said Peter, “but we still don’t know what he’s doing. If we don’t know what he’s doing, we don’t know where he’s going.” He waves a hand at the woman. “I mean, how many witches is this? Does he not like witches? Not that I'd blame him. From personal experience -.”

“What if he's doing the same thing we are?” interrupted Malia.

“Looking for himself?” Peter asked, doubtfully.

“I mean what we've had Deaton doing. Researching. Finding witches.” She threw her hands up and looked pointedly around the room. “It’s Stiles’ thing, right? Well, what we’ve been following looks like that. He’s not just killing witches. He’s killing witches with a lot of books.”

Derek and Scott looked at Peter.

Peter looked toward the ceiling. “You do realize I’m not your talking grimoire, don’t you?”

“Peter.”

“In theory, sure. The body may lose the soul, but it still holds the basic personality. It follows similar trains of thought. If you think Stiles would consider something like this, this version of him would probably think about it.”

XX

“You want your soul back?” the new witch asked. She looked surprised but pleasant about it.

In the corner of the room, a blonde vampire complained, “It’s turning into a bloody trend.”

Dawn flapped her hand. “Don’t mind Spike. He’s got a soul. There’s only two ensouled vampires that we know of. This is making him feel off-the-rack.” She smiled sweetly at Spike. “Don’t worry, snookums. You’re still special to me.”

He flipped her off.

Dawn snorted. “Do you have your own Orb?” she asked Stiles.

“No. I heard you could help with that.” He tapped his pen on the table. After a fruitless search for Angelus, who was ‘vacationing in a hell dimension,’ this witch was his best lead. He gave her his most charming smile, somewhere between ‘forgive me dad’ and ‘sex me Derek’. “Could you? Help?”

She nodded. “I can reach out to my contacts. I think Willow has one. She’s in New Mexico.” Stiles froze, and she added. “No, she’s not one of the witches you killed. That was mean, by the way.”

“What can I say? I have no soul.”

“Mmm. The you-with-a-soul probably won’t be so nonchalant,” Dawn reminded him. “That’s kind of why it’s a curse.”

“The me-with-a-soul can go home,” said Stiles, a little jealous of this. “Don’t vampires ever want to go home?”

Spike answered with forced nonchalance, “Sure they do. They just bring death with them.”

“Yeah, well, my friends are werewolves. If I try to bring death back, they’ll eat me.” He fiddled with his pen again, rolling it over and through his fingers. “So, how much is this gonna cost me? Cause we just confirmed that I don’t have a soul to sell.”

“Lucky for you, I don’t bargain in souls. Just cold, hard cash,” Dawn said, as if he had much more of that.

“A lot of it,” said Spike.

“But you’re cute. So, we can talk about a payment plan.” Another voice interrupted with, “I’ll pay.”

Stiles shot to his feet, overbalanced just a little, and caught the table. He turned. Derek stood there in his boots, jeans, and hooded jacket. He’d let his beard grow out, and it somewhat hid his sunken cheeks. There were shadows under his eyes. They shined looking at Stiles, who rubbed his hands on his jeans and shifted from foot to foot.

Dawn gasped behind him. “Oh. Oh, that is so awesome,” she cooed.

XX

“I knew you guys wouldn’t let me stay like this. I had to find a solution so that I could go back home.”

“You could’ve asked for help,” said Derek.

“Well, I thought you were going to stake me. My continued existence was a high priority.”

“Your continued existence was a high priority for me too.”

Stiles’ fingers twitched at his side. “So, I know I’m soulless and evil right now, but I really want to hug you. I also have even less impulse control than normal so I’m going to hug you. I’m just forewarning you so that you could back away or dodge or whatever. I’ll try not to take it personally.”

Stiles took one step and then two and then a quick third before he threw his arms around Derek and clung. He held on tighter than normal, the strength of the vampire obvious. Derek hugged him back, fisted a hand in his sweater, and buried his nose in Stiles’ neck. There was no beating heart but there was Stiles breath, quick and hot on his skin.

“Do you even need to breathe?” Derek wondered.

“Don’t think so,” said Stiles. “I’m gonna do it anyway. Sue me.”

Derek chuckled wetly. He pulled his head back far enough to kiss at Stiles’ forehead. “You seem so normal right now.”

Stiles shook his head, “But I’m not. I hurt people. I kill people. I steal stuff more than I did before. I don’t really care. I even kind of like it. I just know you do, my dad definitely would, and - oh my god - Scott’s probably such a sad puppy right now.”

Derek rubbed a hand up and down his back. There’d be tears in the future, he knew, tears and nightmares. They’d need to move because their neighbors were dead, and Stiles was supposed be. Maybe he’d take Stiles to New York. He knew from experience it was a good place to start again. “Is that why you did this?” Derek asked. He always knew Stiles held on tight, but he was still wrapping his mind around this.

“Well, it’s not like I could take you all with me,” said Stiles, pulling away. He pressed his lips together, sucked them, and then released them with a ‘pop.’ “I mean, I could bite my Dad. You can’t turn werewolves though. I’d happily lose Peter in a supermarket, but I can’t lose the rest of you. Derek, you know I can’t.” He shrugged. “I love you. I’m love’s bitch.”

XX

Derek held Stiles to his chest with an arm around his shoulders. Scott and Malia held both his hands and wrists. Peter lounged on a chair.

“This is going to hurt,” Dawn said.

“I can handle it,” said Stiles. He wiggled his captive hands. “And, look: moral support.”

“It’ll hurt more when I’m done.”

“He can handle that too,” said Derek.

Dawn smiled at them. “I swear, someone should write a song about you two, a sweet but sexy one. I’m gonna bug Spike until he does that.” She got down to business, double checking her arrangements and waving incense.

Stiles didn’t get nervous until she started to chant. Derek could feel him tense and hooked his chin over Stiles’ shoulder. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “This is going to help. I’m right here. Nobody is going to leave you. We’ll take you home. Do you hear me? We’ll go home. Together.”

Stiles leaned his head into Derek’s. “Yeah, I want to go home.”

His eyes shined and his soul crashed back into his body.

It hurt like hell.

**Author's Note:**

> "I may be love's bitch, but at least I'm man enough to admit it." - Spike (BtVS)


End file.
